In many industries and fields of endeavor, attachments are made to surfaces for purposes of mounting, attaching, or joining equipment, assemblies or apparatus to these surfaces. Such attachments might be to structures, to equipments, or to apparatus. Such attachment may be made by welding, adhesive, joining, anchorage devices, threaded lugs, threaded nuts or similar elements.
It is important in some applications to determine whether an attachment can withstand a designated load, and this is often accomplished by applying a static load to the attachment to determine whether it can withstand the load without separating from the surface or otherwise failing. Typically, the load applied during testing exceeds the load to be applied in service.
An example of this might be an attachment of a pipe to a concrete ceiling. The attachment might be made by drilling a hole in the concrete, placing a lead or composition anchor therein, and connecting a pipe or cable hanger to the anchor with a bolt. This attachment system must withstand, at minimum, the weight of the hanger and bolt and the weight of the pipe. A test of its ability to do so would apply a force equivalent to the force associated with that weight, plus a safety factor.
One way that this has been done in the past has been to attach varying calibrated weights to the attachment system. However, this is fully effective only if the attachment is vertical, i.e. to a ceiling, and the normal loading force is due to gravity. Furthermore, weights sufficient to apply the thousands of pounds of force that are often needed for structural applications of such testing are bulky, heavy, and difficult to carry and maneuver and could create safety problems. In a crowded environment, equipment or assemblies may have to be moved or detached to provide space for bulky weights or test apparatus.
Another way that this has been done in the past has been to utilize pneumatic or hydraulic apparatus to generate the loading. However, this requires compression or pumping apparatus which is bulky and not readily portable and maintenance of seals for the equipment to continue to operate reliably. Furthermore, a large area around the particular attachment under test has had to be cleared during testing using pneumatic devices and may similarly have had to be cleared if weights are used. This has been a problem in the telephone industry, where ceiling and wall anchors are used to attach a variety of cable racks, tracks, or ducts in facilities such as central offices and cable vaults. Because space is often at a premium in these locations, to perform testing of added attachments using pneumatic devices or weights it has been necessary to move existing cables, which can impermissibly disrupt services carried on them. This has hindered the ability to perform testing.
In view of these shortcomings, it is an object of the present invention to provide a device that facilitates the application of designated static loads to anchorage hardware to determine its ability to sustain loads. While my invention is herein described to test anchorage hardware used to attach cable racks and pipes to the ceilings, walls and floors of structures, it is not so limited in its application. The invention may also be used to test protrusions or attachments to surfaces of equipments or apparatus. Further use of the term anchorage, herein, includes other such elements as attachments, protrusions and extensions.